Stretching the Thai-Burma border:
Utilizing and ignoring political peripheries by southern
Burma’s Mon.
Thesis Research Master Social Sciences Graduate School of Social Sciences Supervisor: Prof. Dr. H.W. van Schendel
Nathalie Noach 10264000 16-09-2014 Word count: 19.780
Table of Contents
List of Images, Maps and Figures 3
1 Introduction 7
1.1 Motivation and Relevance 8
1.2 Research Question and Objectives 9
2 Theoretical Framework 11
2.1 Stretching the Border 11
2.2 Ethnic Minority Nationalism 13
2.3 Migration 16
3 Research Methods and Settings 19
3.1 Research Population 19
3.2 Research Settings 20
3.2.1 Mon State, Burma 20
3.2.2 Sangkhlaburi, Thailand 22
3.3 Research Methods 23
3.4 Language 25
3.5 Obstacles and Challenges 26
3.6 Research Bias 28
4 Government and Goods 29
4.1 The Burmese Side 29
4.2 Goods 32
5 Services and Servicing 35
5.1 Migrant Workers 37
5.2 Organizational Workers 43
5.3 Mon Students 50
5.4 Displaced Mon Persons 55
5.5 Monks 58
6 Conclusion 62
List of Images, Maps and Figures Image
Title Page Thai-Burma border at Halochanee. Author’s photograph.
Maps
Map 1. Administrative zones of Burma. 4
Map 2. Locations of presence and territories of the major non-state 5 actors in southern Burma.
Map 3. Sangkhlaburi-New Mon State Party controlled area stretch 6 of the Thai-Burma border.
Map 4. Common border crossings for Mon migrant workers. 36
Map 5. Common border crossings for Mon organizational workers. 42
Map 6. Common border crossings for Mon students. 49
Map 7. Common border crossings displaced Mon people. 54
Figure
Figure 1. Initial reasons, and reasons at time of interview of interviewees 24 to cross Burma’s border.
Map 1. Administrative divisions of Burma1, Mon State is highlighted (Travel Myanmar 2014).
1Please note that the Divisions on the map are now called Regions, e.g. Tanintharyi Division is now
Thanintharyi Region, etc. Additionally spellings of geographical locations in Burma are not standardized, or may have various names, therefore Thanintharyi may be spelled as Tanintharyi, or be called Tenasserim Region, Kayin State is Karen State, etc.
Map 2. Locations of presence and territories of the major non-state actors in southern
Burma (Transnational Institute, Burma Centrum Netherlands, South 2011, p. 11). KNLA is the Karen National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Karen National Union, and DKBA is the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, formerly known as the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. I refer to NMSP ceasefire zones as New Mon State Party controlled areas. Moulmein was the name given to Mawlamyine by the British.
Map 3. Sangkhlaburi-New Mon State Party controlled area stretch of the Thai-Burma
border2 (Google Maps 2014, modified by author).
2 The locations of Halochanee, Huai Malay, Nyisar, NMSP HQ (New Mon State Party Headquarters)
1. Introduction
Are the ethnic Mon who cross the border of southern Burma3 engaging in illegal patterns
of migration, or is the Thai-Burma border stretched to facilitate licit movements beyond areas where Mon can officially stay? Mon, have traveled to contemporary Thailand and further for centuries (Guillon 1999). During the same time that state borders have sprung up restricting Mon migratory movements, Mon people have gradually defined and demarcated their ethnic identity along southern Burma’s remote border area. In times where political tension in Burma intensified, Mon people left for Thailand. While borders have rapidly gained increasing importance as political divides between countries (Baud & van Schendel 1997), and reiterated how people are meant to be contained within them (Ludden 2003), Mon have used this to their advantage. The ethnic group native to southern Burma, has utilized the political divide between Thailand and Burma, and sought options to navigate across borders without complying with an internationally enforced protocol of appropriate documentation to do so. To research how Mon stretch the border that is meant to contain them, three phenomena were identified. The protagonist in the diagnosis is the political border between Thailand and Burma, where nationalism practiced by Mon comes at a close second and migration of Mon or movements of goods in Mon spaces accentuate border permeability.
Politics in Burma have spiraled downward since its borders were enforced. This led to the most noticeable difference between the nations on both sides of the Thai-Burma border; how polarized the political and economic situations between the two countries are. Thailand has moved forward, while Burma moved backward, and until recently no improvements were seen for its citizens. The dichotomy of opportunities between Burma and elsewhere has resulted in Mon leaving southern Burma en masse, for elsewhere in Southeast Asia, though most stay in Thailand. To leave Burma, specific stretches of the Thai-Burma border facilitate the movements of certain goods and people. However, the majority of Mon and material leaving and entering Burma, has occurred without sufficient documentation.
One institution has facilitated Mon people to leave southern Burma without needing
3 As a critic of Burma’s former governments, I will use ‘Burma’ to refer to the country, not Myanmar.
Burma was the name given to the country by the British, a name dating back to pre-colonial times. In 1989 the country’s government implemented a name change to Myanmar, to include all the country’s citizens, not just the ethnic Burman majority. However, ‘Myanmar’ remains a term referring to the ethnic majority and is perceived as synonymous with oppression of ethnic minorities, therefore I will rely on the name ‘Burma’. Even so, Myanmar is used while in the country, by those in favor of the government and entities that (are forced to) acknowledge the government, such as NGOs, political institutions, etc.. Burma is the name given by those who are not in favor of the government.
documentation, namely Burmese former insurgency group, the New Mon State Party. This nationalist group founded to represent ethnic Mon, gained political importance in the border stretch between Burma’s Mon State and Sangkhlaburi District in Thailand (see map p. 6). Their part in Thailand’s extraction deal of Burma’s natural resources resulted in Thailand becoming more lenient when Burma’s Mon sought refuge on the other side of the Thai-Burma border (Lang 2002, p. 118). A second institution – Mon monastery Wat Wang Wiwekaram, located in the Thai-Burma border town of Sangkhlaburi, Thailand – has provided the grounds where Mon can live. Although both organizations operate in Sangkhlaburi, they cater to Mon, most of whom do not have Thai ID. To allow and facilitate this relatively free flow of people across state borders, the Thai-Burma border has been stretched to the group of Mon, able to utilize the network and services of the organizations. While a large number of people may benefit from the New Mon State Party and Wat Wang Wiwekaram, Mon organizational workers and Mon Students who study in one of the many Mon organizations in Sangkhlaburi, and Mon monks residing in the temple, respectively, reap most advantages. Advantages include leaving Burma for
Thailand without documentation, with Thai authorities4 condoning it. Additionally other
groups of Mon stretch the Thai-Burma border as migrant workers and Displaced Burmese Persons via Sangkhlaburi and elsewhere. Not only do people make it across the borders through areas that the New Mon State Party controls, goods also find their way across borders illegally, unofficially, or as a result of the New Mon State Party.
In this thesis, I aim to research how the social networks of Mon influence their ability to stretch borders. Consecutively, it does not focus on a social reality where political, thus contemporary borders are paramount, but one where social formations allow dynamic demarcations. This case investigates how Mon people uphold long-lasting migration and trade practices while interacting with contemporary constructs of political borders.
1.1 Motivation and Relevance
Are international migration and stretching the border polar opposites? How Mon people utilize the Thai-Burma border for personal and work-related reasons spurred me to research this topic. Mon going to Thailand is clearly an international phenomenon, however, as most Mon choose to go illegally, via documents that are not officially – and certainly not internationally – recognized, or using the incorrect category of
4After the military coup on may 22, 2014, Thailand has enforced its borders more strictly, not granting
permission to undocumented migrants to cross into its territory. Since I did my fieldwork before May 22 of this year, this thesis explicates cross-border practices of Mon, and cross-border distribution of goods via Mon spaces before the coup.
documentation, fits stretching the border better. Furthermore, seeing how people could so easily leave Burma for certain areas in Thailand during previous trips provoked an initial personal reason to explore this topic.
Burma first triggered my interest in 2009, when I was doing voluntary work on the Thai side of the Thai-Burma border. In the early stages of my curiosity for the country, it was the lack of information to be found on Burma that made me go back to its border region every year. I then noticed on one of my trips across the Thai-Burma border, having no documentation to support me, how easily the political border bisecting the two countries was stretched. The idea of ignoring an internationally imposed protocol, dictating a traveler to have legal papers to swap countries, left me puzzled. I therefore aimed to research how Mon people travel across the Thai-Burma border and on what premises Mon could ignore Burma’s political divide separating it from Thailand and other borders of Southeast Asia.
Academically, I think this case study contributes to scholarly discussions about permeability of Southeast Asia’s borders in which borderland politics play an integral role. Additionally, this research being an ethnographic study that focuses on how Mon interact with political borders, rather than how political borders are imposed from state centers, is relevant.
1.2 Research Question and Objectives
At the end of July 2013, I left for Sangkhlaburi, Thailand, and Mon State, Burma, to conduct fieldwork for the coming eight months. During this research period, the topics of migration, the stretching of borders, nationalism and constructs of identity guided me in seeking to unravel how Mon people utilize their Mon identity when moving between Mon State and host countries in Southeast Asia. I aim to answer the following research question throughout this thesis.
How – if at all – are Mon identity and Mon spaces used, when stretching the southern part of the Thai-Burma border?
I seek to unravel how spaces claimed by the New Mon State Party are utilized by Mon, and other people who cross the Thai-Burma border. Furthermore, I investigate how institutions using soft power and hard power in Sangkhlaburi levered deals with regional Thai authorities to open geographical windows where the political border can be disregarded.
Additionally, the following subquestions guided me through my research.
● What geographical areas along southern Burma’s border are commonly traveled through?
● What are motives for utilizing Mon identity and Mon spaces when crossing Burma’s border?
● To what distance can one’s Mon identity be utilized when taking the Thai-Burma border as the center of its effectiveness
While the Mon are an ethnic group in Burma, they act more in line with what is perceived as nationalism in the West. Therefore I rely on Tønneson and Antlöv’s Asian Forms of
the Nation (1998) to understand how nationalism as practiced by an ethnic minority group
in Burma allows for the stretching of national borders. Additionally, the notion of borderlands is focal to this research and migration is used to determine the effects of borderlands in downplaying political borders.
2 Theoretical Framework
This chapter sketches out the theoretical framework I used to guide me through my empirical findings and includes the three concepts of stretching borders, ethnic minority nationalism, and migration. Southern Burma’s borders are stretched when people rely on networks that are often entangled with nationalism as practiced by Burma’s ethnic minority groups. Migration, or movements of goods and people reveals how this happens.
2.1 Stretching the Border
Since the 1950s national boundaries covered the globe, imposing that “all histories of all peoples [now] appear inside national maps, in a cookie-cutter world of national geography” (Ludden 2003, p. 1058). It has become impossible to envision a world without state borders, yet large numbers of people violate their presence on a daily basis. Thus not all borders have the same effect on the individuals, goods, and services it is meant to contain. As a result of polarized facilities and opportunities on both sides of political borders, people have crossed the state-created lines. Consecutively, in search of what home countries lack and host countries provide, borders are stretched to include extrajudicial parts of adjacent geographical areas.
Stretching the border happens when nations’ political barriers are ignored by groups of people in attempts to gain what they cannot, in their home countries, emotionally or materialistically. Regions where borders are stretched allow; Actors to live in areas or zones of host countries – often closely located to political borders – where politicized institutions or organizations allow or facilitate these people to stay, disregarding their official status; actors or goods to initially go to (neighboring) host countries unofficially, or without appropriate documentation; and these actors or goods to primarily move by land.
The term ‘borders’ is defined here as “political divides that were the result of state building, especially from the eighteenth century onward” and were often “conceived in state capitals where they were negotiated in the corridors of power and made final on drawing boards” (Baud & van Schendel 1997, pp. 214-217). People who deal with boundaries in practice have contested the political borders’ rigidity in theory. Rather than political borders containing goods and services in one designated side, state peripheries contribute to borderlands. Baud & van Schendel argue that borderlands are cross-border regions, in which zones on both sides of the state border are taken as the unit of analysis and are “significantly affected by an international border” (ibid, p. 216). Subsequently, in border zones, a “triangle of power relations between state, regional elite, and local
people” is present on either side of a border, which may partially overlap each other (Baud & van Schendel 1997, p. 219, p. 227)
Taking the border as the core of inspection, rather than a state center, its effects are most noticeable in the ‘border heartland’, fading into the “intermediate borderland”; a region that is moderately to weakly influenced by the border, though effects of the border can always be noticed (Baud & van Schendel 1997, p. 222). Lastly there is the “outer borderland” where effects of the border cannot be noticed in everyday life, however only every so often phenomena having their roots in borders, radiate further inland (ibid).
The border heartland leaves judicial borders porous and allows people from one side of it, to claim spaces on the other allowing political borders to be stretched. Horstmann perceives Christianity as a marker of Karen identity, which is propagated by former rebel
group the Karen National Union5 to establish spaces on both sides of the Thai-Burma
border. Christianity as practiced by this ethic group has thus become a tool for the Karen to stretch the Thai-Burma border, by claiming spaces established on the Thai side of the borderland (2011). In part through Christianity, in part through being a former insurgency, the Karen have managed to create a buffer zone stretching from territories in Karen State, to the greater Mae Sot area in Thailand and including the refugee camps in the area. The author says that by stretching the Burmese border to include plots of Thailand, the Karen hope to escape from being forced to live in refugee camps, and on the Burmese side of the border, where spaces to create Christian networks are in decline. Christian organizations provide material and immaterial assistance to those facing persecution, violence, relocation, and loss of rights (ibid).
Horstmann mentions another manner to stretch borders; when the Karen who obtained their education and resources after crossing into Thailand have become an elite. This in turn allows the Karen to go back to Karen State as “humanitarians, providing medical and educational resources, help to document human rights violations and do advocacy work” (Horstmann 2014, p. 47). Infrastructure to facilitate this kind of stretching the border is often, at least in part, provided by (former) insurgency groups. Here again, these non-state actors contribute to the stretching of borders.
Free Trade Zones and other Special Economic Zones such as the one around Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela’s tri-border region also lead to borders being porous (Aguiar 2010, p. 2). In such zones, governments of their respective regions facilitate that
5 Many of Burma’s non-state actors, such as the Karen National Union, and the New Mon State Party
were founded as insurgency groups. Upon signing ceasefire agreements with the central government, they became former insurgencies. The New Mon State Party signed a ceasefire agreement in 1995 that was broken in 2010, and signed a currently enacted ceasefire in 2012.
barriers are removed and infrastructure is created. The Special Economic Zone being established to include the Thai-Burma border towns of Mae Sot on the Thai side, linking Myawaddy on the Burmese are yet another means of allowing borders to be stretched. Good infrastructure allows materials from one country to pop up beyond its border and in the next. Furthermore, they also simplify the journey from Burma to Thailand, as hostile jungle-like stretches of the border make way for paved roads (Fernquest 2013).
Southeast Asia’s borders are often lines between stark contrasts (Baud & van Schendel 1997), of which job opportunities are an indication. There is the fact that employers demanding low-wage laborers –wherever they may come from – do not nearly attempt to enforce the strict borders around the job opportunities they provide, as do countries, creating yet another way to stretch border spaces (Kogut 1991, p. 1).
As a result of borders, border zones become important, because what one side of the divide lacks, the other side provides. Borderlands, in facilitating this zero-sum scenario, are at least are regions where the wants and needs of a given group of people live closer to a social equilibrium they envision as suitable, than what non-borderlands can offer them. Therefore, as borders are very much political, borderlands are social formations, that are dynamic depending on who accesses them and for what reasons. Contrary to maps of states, maps of borderlands are not rigid, and demarcations depend on actions of border-passers. Where political borders are ignored by groups of people, and illicit or illegal movements of goods and people prevail, the stretching of borders takes place.
2.2 Ethnic Minority Nationalism
It is no longer true that Western concepts and ideologies form the blueprint of non-Western ones. This includes nationalism; concepts of nationalism in Asia, do not have their roots in those of the West, but the continent has its own particular forms, including Burma (Tønnesson and Antlöv 1998). While clear-cut theoretical models are often described to explain empirically verified notions, nationalism in Burma is rather peculiar. This is due to the importance of the time around decolonization in constructs of cotemporary nationalism. Additionally is it because ‘nationality’ and ‘ethnic minority’ have been used interchangeably. In Burma, the approach to nationalism differs from the approach in the West – in the Asian country all ethnic groups native to it, are seen as nationalities (Thawnghmung 2011). Additionally, a significant number of political leaders of Burma’s ethnic minority groups thought about secession, but never went through with it, leading to would-be nations to each establish their own nationalism, separate from the central government’s nationalism.
Tønnesson and Antlöv explain that nationalism in Asia can have three foundations, or routes (1998). Firstly, ethno-nationalism, when a state is formed by an ethnic group; secondly official nationalism, when a “state uses its bureaucracy to mobilize a single national culture; and lastly plural nationalism, when a specific territory’s inhabitants “secede from a larger state or colonial power, and form a new multi-ethnic state” (1998, p. 20). To a minimal degree, Tønnesson and Antlöv believe that Burma came into existence following the first, or ethno-nationalist route, since the vast majority of the country is Buddhist. The authors set Burma as an example of the third route, since Burma became a separately administered region in 1937, and was no longer part of India, before finally losing colonial status in 1948. For this third route, anti-colonial liberation played in integral role, which was set in motion in the 1940s, by Burma’s independence leader General Aung San.
Following Tønnesson and Antlöv’s variants of Asian nationalism, Burma’s recent history proved that none of the ethno-nationalism, official nationalism, or plural nationalism are the sole form of nationalism applied throughout all of the country’s recent history. As a result of feeling misrepresented by the central government or the central government not keeping their end of the bargain in post-colonial Burma’s political
agreements, nationalist leaders of the major races6 have emphasized nationalist properties
increasingly since the 1940s. As the country’s political situation deteriorated, ethnic minority groups increasingly demarcated their identities to set themselves apart from other minority groups, and the ethnic Burmans. This was done by using symbols, believing in ethnic based histories, ethnic based sacred centers, etc. to establish a we-feeling and differentiate themselves from other ethnic groups (Tønnesson and Antlöv 1998; Barth 1969).
Additionally, what Gellner describes as ‘diaspora nationalism’ – a type of nationalism where the “powerless are better educated than the powerful, but represent a minority without a specific homeland (e.g that of the Jews, overseas Chinese and Indians)” (1994 in Tønnesson and Antlöv 1998, p. 4) – could be applied to various ethnic minority groups living along the Thai-Burma border. Members of border-based ethnic groups are more likely to have access to education and other resources, which in turn is a tool to have a financially secure life. While not a diaspora, certainly not when living in Burma, border-based ethnic minority groups, perceive themselves to have access to more and better resources leading to self-sustainability, than other ethnic groups in the country. This also
6 Burma’s eight major races include the Burmans, Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon, Rakhine and
Shan. “Race” in Burma, does not connote the same as ‘race’ in the West, but merely refers to the eight major ethnic groups, or ‘nationalities’ of the country.
indicates that there are layers of nationalism; Jews adhere to a main nationalist identity, e.g. being Dutch, however Jewish identity forms the basis of nationalism by utilized association, whether trying to utilize or address a sense of belonging, create a political platform, etc. For Burma’s minorities this applies too, Mon may address human rights from a Burmese perspective, as everyone within the country should be able to enjoy them. However, during Mon National Day, Mon nationalism is addressed.
Tønnesson and Antlöv explicate that there are two routes to the creation of modern nations; from above, where agents of the state incorporate the population (e.g. France, Japan and Thailand). Secondly, from below, where the formation of a new state in which an ethnie is focal to separation or unification, Bangladesh, Burma, Italy and Ireland are examples of this (1998, p. 10). However, many of Burma’s ethnic minority groups perceive themselves as an ethnie and are organized by ethnic-based (former) insurgencies, or religious leaders, who have distinguished between themselves and Burmans. Therefore Burma’s ethnic groups are peculiar, since nationalism is formed from a meso-level, where non-state actors form and maintain a national identity. It is neither national government agents, nor agents from below to create a cohesive Republic of the Union of Myanmar. The country, being too politically fractured to be a union, has its ethnic nationalist leaders to thank for a meso-approach to nationalism. In this regard the Mon comply with Smith’s definition of a nation, since they are “a named human population with shared myths and memories, occupying an historic territory and possessing a mass, public culture” (Smith 1999, p. 3). Yet equal legal rights and duties for all members (ibid) can only be attained in New Mon State Party controlled areas (see map p.5; p.6); political enclaves – officially obtained after signing a ceasefire with the central government in 1995– along the Thai-Burma border where the Party has ruled with
near-complete autonomy7. When this type of ethnic based nationalism occurring in Burma
spills into Thailand, notions of political borders become more ambiguous.
These border zones have even facilitated state-like structures opposing central governments. In Burma’s post-colonial history, the Burmese government never gained a grip on its borderlands (Baud & van Schendel 1997, p. 218), while various Burmese ethnic minority groups did. Upon assessment of the oppressive general situation, no space was left for political power of ethnic nationalist minority groups, influx delimitations of not only geographical areas, but also ethnic traits were established, which were then demarcated (Ullman 1947, pp. 147-149; Barth 1969). In so doing, regional ethnic based
7 Smith mentions a single economy to be part of the equation to ‘being’ a nation, however Burma does
nationalist groups, including their armed wings have operated from the border, and some of these groups, such as the Karen, “established separate administrations” (Baud & van Schendel 1997, p. 218). These nationalists never gained international recognition, thus never gained state status (ibid). This is what Baud & van Schendel refer to as the “Rebellious Borderland”; here regional elites who distinguish themselves from the rest of the country, attempt to counter the state (1997, p. 228). By leading rebellions the regional elites challenge the state control over borderlands and “ignore the new border, in an attempt to establish a regional counter-government” (ibid).
As a result of this, as Rajah argues in relation to imagined communities, invented identity and the defining of states (2002), “pre-colonial and post-colonial states may co-exist at the Thai-Burmese border” (1990, p. 122 in Horstmann 2002, p. 5). Additionally Rajah explicates that ethnic groups are formed “across national boundaries and the state, which are obscured by the fact that we tend to think in post-nation state terms” (2002). At certain geographical areas, where borders and people are not rigid, when groups of people with a shared identity move, borders as perceived by this group of people change locations. However, political divides between nations are less dynamic than their inhabitants, so where people who adhere to one form of nationalism are separated by the edge of a central government’s jurisdiction, the stretching of borders will take place.
2.3 Migration
Concepts of stretching the border and international migration are somewhat conflicting, since migration often stipulates people to move within one state, or internationally, both in which central governments play a key role to determine its type. However, in stretching the border, the role of central governments is minimized. Migration is solely the tool to determine the degree and rffects of stretching, where and to whom. While many of Southeast Asia’s migrants can be categorized as diaspora or transnationals, and numerous other migratory sub-types, these are in essence are minimally linked to stretching the border.
Bauböck & Faist argue transnationalism is more of an agentic move, while diaspora is more structural (2010). Additionally the authors state that in being a member of a transnational community, members who are affiliated with two countries, there is a double association of it ‘being a chosen way of life’. As a result, people seek to acquire dual citizenship of the host country and country of origin. It is also stated that in cases of transnationalism, there is no “uprooting from the territory and society of origin, or trauma, as in the case of diasporas” and that there is “no strong desire to return to their
home country as they never actually leave their place of origin” (Michel Bruneau 2010, p. 44 in Bauböck & Faist, eds). This does not fit the situation of the Burmese migrants who are illegal, or insufficiently documented in Southeast Asia. Specifically in Thailand, the chances of getting Thai citizenship, or even any Thai legal status are slim for Burmese. Many Burmese stay in Thailand, because they are indeed “uprooted from their region of origin”. Furthermore, political oppression, lack of economic prosperity, forced migration or internal displacement all play roles.
Like with transnationalism, some criteria of diaspora fit migration of Burma’s ethnic minority groups. Since there is no universal definition of diaspora, I will adapt Brubaker’s criteria to define diaspora. He sets three criteria for communities to qualify as diaspora, 1). dispersion, 2). homeland orientation and 3). boundary-maintenance (2005, p. 5). The latter two criteria are all somewhat applicable to the returning flows of Mon, yet all are also problematic. Particularly since ‘diaspora’ often refers to a “multi-generational pattern” (Faist 2010, p. 22 in Bauböck & Faist eds), and most of the Mon now traveling between Thailand and Burma, were born in Burma. ‘Diaspora’ also connotes a collective reason for emigration of the home country (ibid). The Mon, when crossing the border to Thailand and potential other Southeast Asian countries, leave with relative ease, giving more agentic reasons to leave. For the Mon it is a specific part of Burma, many wish to return to – Mon State, the rest of Burma may not be considered ‘home’. Ethnic group members choosing to go back to an ethnonational homeland may be seen as return migration, however Burma’s population consists of many ethnic groups (Brubaker 2005, p. 5), and the Mon minority does not set out a blueprint of what the country’s ethnic identity should be. Homeland orientation and boundary-maintenance play a significant role in who the Mon are, especially the Mon living on along the Thai-Burma border, and elsewhere in Thailand and Burma. However, based on these two criteria, the Mon would be a diaspora in their native geographical area, meaning ‘diaspora’ would have a political motive.
In this thesis, I seek to explain how different groups of people utilize the New Mon State Party and other politicized institutions’ power in certain geographical areas along the Thai-Burma border. I subsequently investigate how this influences migratory movements where political borders are stretched and manipulated to benefit its Mon crossers. To understand this phenomenon, it is important to understand who the Mon are, what role Mon identity has and how this identity is much politicized, particularly along the border. Consecutively, different types of migratory movements will be explored, since different groups of people rely on different types of migration.
Migration of the ethnic Mon from Burma to Thailand can roughly be divided into two streams; an old one, and a contemporary one (Guillon 1999). The old stream – of which the first group of Mon came to Thailand during a massive exodus in 1595 (ibid, p. 194) – has lived in Thailand for generations, have Thai citizenship and are assimilated into Thai culture. The new stream, which I seek to research, left Burma for Thailand and possibly other Southeast Asian countries in recent times, and depending on their motive to stay in Thailand, have few links and weak relations to their host countries, while still having good ties stimulated by frequent returns and core family relations in Burma (Dahinden 2010, p. 58).
The stretching of the border allows this new stream of Mon migrants to travel past state boundaries, since Party claimed spaces and networks allow people to slip through the net and go unseen by authorities of host countries when leaving (for) home countries (Horstmann 2011; Bauböck & Faist 2010). Stretching the border, with Buddhist monks and the New Mon State Party as structural entities, creates a lifestyle of “quasi-nomadism” among border-crossers “where informal notaries are interlocutors who are very much valorized by regional and local, political and police authorities, they contribute to institutionalizing uncontrolled areas (Tarrius 2001, p. 55 in Michel Bruneau 2010, p. 46-47 in Bauböck & Faist, eds.).
The process of Mon crossing the border has transnationalist or diasporic features, since the Mon outside Burma are a national group – by the Burmese interpretation of national(-) – “living outside an (imagined) homeland, and are migrants with durable ties across countries” (Faist 2010, p. 9 in Bauböck & Faist eds). Migration thus sets the tone to determine the focal points of stretching the border in relation to national ethnic identity in southern Burma, yet is only part of the ‘differential diagnosis’ to determine how flexible borders are.
3. Research Methods and Settings
In this chapter, the process of data collecting and the research methods I used are discussed. The methods were applied in Sangkhlaburi, and minimally so in Bangkok, Thailand and on various locations in southern Mon State, Burma. Next, I elaborate on how I collected the empirical data during my eight-month research stint that contributes to this thesis is elaborated on. Lastly, I reflect on how the network of people I had access to colored my research.
3.1 Research Population
Speaking to Mon Buddhist monks and abbots, migrant workers, New Mon State Party members, students, organizational workers and internally displaced persons who crossed the Thai-Burma border, and other political borders in Southeast Asia, helped me to answer my research question and subquestions. By including these people – some who contributed to fading the border due to their political position, while others ignored the border by complying with codes superiors had set out for them - in my research population, I aimed to get a holistic view of how the south of the Thai-Burma border has been stretched.
I had met several people on previous trips to the Thai-Burma border area when doing voluntary work and research there. To expand my research population, I relied on a snowball effect, which proved particularly successful in Mon State. Since I was restricted in leaving my house in Burma, snowball-obtained contacts would often visit me in my house. My sporadic reversed proverbial approach to research where if Mohammed will not come to the mountain, the mountain must go to Mohammed, at times would be the only access I had to a research population.
Other than lacking opportunities to access people, the access to people itself was more successful. I had hoped to conduct full interviews with New Mon State Party members of several ranks, to learn about their role in the stretching of borders, but this proved impossible. Between the lack of mobility and most members traveling to regions I was not in order to perform their role in Burma’s political process, I only managed to have various informal talks with Party members.
3.2 Research Settings
I chose two areas to stage my research. Firstly, Mon State in Burma, as most Mon people
are from their designated state8. Secondly, I went to Sangkhlaburi district in Thailand,
which plays an important role in the migration of Mon people, certainly those who are going to Thailand. Sangkhlaburi together with Rahaeng to the north and Tavoy to the south have throughout the history of the region, been of importance for Burmese Mon
crossing to Thailand and vice versa. As a result of monk Ajahn9 Tala Uttama setting up a
Mon resettlement site in the town in the 1940s, and the Sangkhlaburi-Three Pagodas Pass region being of importance for the New Mon State Party for decades now, Burmese Mon migration and this area of the Thai-Burma border go hand-in-hand.
3.2.1 Mon State, Burma
Mon State (see map p. 4) is an administrative division in southern Burma and forms the geographical region in Burma where most Mon people reside. Approximately thirty
percent of its population of 3,165,27510 (UNHCR 2014), are said to be Mon1112 (South
2005, p. 21).
Mon State residents often rely on farming for their livelihoods and popular crops to be cultivated are rubber, rice, betel nut and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Although many people of the less fertile eastern part of Burma come to Mon State to work on farms and plantations, despite the relatively arable land of southern Burma, many Mon have left. Ethnic Mon residents in Mon State have struggled as result of political instability and lack of money to be made in the state, and havr consecutively migrated to Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia.
8 This is not to say that Mon people only reside in, or come from Mon State. There are also villages
with significant Mon populations in Karen State and Tanintharyi Region and elsewhere. People belonging to the ethnic nationalities represented by a state (e.g. the Mon, Karen, Chin, etc.) may live outside of the state created around their race.
9 Ajahn in Mon means teacher, and is also a title to address monks who have passed Vassa (Buddhist
lent) ten times.
10 The last proper census of Burma was taken in the 1930s, and any statistics of the country’s
population are estimates. In the first quarter of 2014, the government initiated a new census. However, as of September 2014, the data has not been fully processed yet.
11 Determining who is Mon and who is not, is rather problematic. National identity in Burma has never
been rigid (see Leech’s, Political systems of highland Burma: A study of Kachin social structure, published in 1954 and Lieberman’s Ethnic Politics in Eighteenth-Century Burma published in 1978, among other works). Contemporary markers generally focus on if a person can speak the Mon language, also important are an individual’s Mon lineage.
12 A multitude of other ethnic groups inhabit the state, including the Dawei, Karen, and Rakhine.
Additionally, a large number of Indians and Anglo-Burmese lived in the state, mostly in its capital city of Mawlamyine.
Political instability has come as a result of actions of the repressive military government, in addition to ethnic-based clashes between the largest Mon-based political institution – the New Mon State Party – and the central government. The Party was founded in the late 1950s along the Burmese side of the Thai-Burma border as an insurgency group, as a result of Mon nationalists feeling increasingly misrepresented and later oppressed by the central Burmese government. The Party made its way into mainstream politics during times of ceasefires between the Mon Party and the central government from 1996-2010, as well as the currently enacted ceasefire, which was signed in February 2012. In Karen State, Mon State and Tanintharyi Region the New Mon State Party has full authority over various ‘New Mon State Party controlled areas’ (see map p. 5) that are remnants of the importance of the jungle-like area along the Thai-Burma border. Tucked far away from the state center, they were out of reach of the central government.
Two of these New Mon State Party controlled areas border Sangkhlaburi District, namely Three Pagodas Pass and Halochanee. This is why the New Mon State Party is of importance in migration to many Mon people, and the stretching of the Thai-Burma border. In this stretch of the Thai-Burma border, people leave the country of Burma for Thailand, not via Burmese controlled areas, but New Mon State Party controlled areas into Sangkhlaburi, Thailand.
Mon migrating from Mon State to Thailand and elsewhere, come from a variety of areas in the region. While all sorts of Mon migrants come from all areas where Mon reside, refugees are more likely to come from specific areas. Although the political situation has stabilized since the New Mon State Party signed a ceasefire agreement with the central government, areas to see many Mon flee were Ye Township, Kyain Seikgyi (see map p. 5; note that the town is spelled as Kyain Seikkyi there) in Karen State, and other areas of Mon State and Southern Karen State close to the Thai-Burma border (see map p. 5). Further, hostile situations between the New Mon State Party and other regional (former) insurgency groups resulted in surges of refugees seeking safety in Sangkhlaburi. Mon monks, migrant workers and employees from organizations come from all regions with Mon populations. However, it is said that in coastal areas of Ye Township, virtually all men go abroad in attempts to find higher salaries than Mon State would offers. Many of these Mon migrants go via Sangkhlaburi District in attempts of finding that which Burma cannot offer.
3.2.2 Sangkhlaburi, Thailand
Sangkhlaburi, a district in Thailand with a population of approximately 41.000 people, is directly located on the Thai-Burma border. The majority of the population in this town is Karen, Mon, and Thai. Sangkhlaburi town, the largest town in Sangkhlaburi district, being closely located to one of the less than a handful official border-crossings into Burma – Three Pagodas Pass – has facilitated cross-border traveling. In recent years, however, the border has officially been ‘closed’, although Burmese people can travel to Thailand for trips of short duration.
Particularly the Mon and Karen have come to the village located in contemporary Thailand for centuries. The first great exodus of Mon going to Thailand occurred in 1595 and repeatedly continued until the beginning of the nineteenth century (Guillon 1999, p. 194). These Mon would ordinarily regroup in border towns including Three Pagodas Pass, Rahaeng and Tavoy (ibid). In more recent times, in the years surrounding independence from the British and the years of political instability caused by this, there have been major influxes of Mon to Sangkhlaburi. A Buddhist monk, who made his way to Sangkhlaburi town in 1948, led the first 60-or-so Mon families. This monk founded temple Wat Wang Wiwekaram, a Mon school, the district’s hospital and established a
Mon side of Sangkhlaburi13.
Political coups in the 1950-1960s and uprisings since the 1980s against the political system in Burma resulted in several more influxes of Burmese to Thailand, including ones of the Mon to Sangkhlaburi. During these years, various Mon organizations, or offices of already existing organizations were established in the town. While not all organizations are directly linked to the New Mon State Party, many of them – when they do not operate under the same umbrella organization as the Party – have had strong ties with the former insurgency group. This also contributes to their political presence in Sangkhlaburi.
The New Mon State Party and Wat Wang Wiwekaram share their power regarding the political fate of Mon in the area, with the Thai government. Because of this, national boundaries have little influence in the area, because the enclaves controlled by (former)
13 Sangkhlaburi is divided into two sides, a Mon side and a Thai side. While Mon and Thai living in
their respective sides are not mutually exclusive, on the Mon side, the monastery controls the area. Much of the Mon side is built on the premises of the Wat Wang Wiwekeram, and when living here, to some (at times rather large) extent, people have to abide by the rules of the abbot. In daily life this does not have implications, however, to build here and to run (Mon) organizations for example, permission has to be granted by the monastery.
insurgency groups largely determine the political climate14, not the Thai or Burmese government. Additionally, a vast majority of the Mon living in Sangkhlaburi does not have legal documents to stay in Thailand, though Thai citizenship was granted to many of the Mon who came to this town in the late 1940s (Wongpolganan 2005). Children of Burmese Displaced Persons registered as such in the area, have also had the chance to apply for Thai citizenship, although they are few in number. This is another reason why the New Mon State Party has influence in this border town. As the Thai government does not acknowledge Burmese refugees, including the Mon, they fall outside of the Thai legal system. Where the Thai legal system fails, the New Mon State Party serves as a proxy of the Thai government among the Mon.
Wat Wang Wiwekaram has relied on the social status of its founding abbot Ajahn Tala Uttama, to guarantee safety for Mon people. Due to the importance of Buddhism in Thailand and Burma and Tala Uttama’s contribution to the Sangkhlaburi community, the institution he represented gained soft power. This soft power has allowed people in specific spaces in Sangkhlaburi, to bypass the Thai and Burmese government, dismissing the importance of the Sangkhlaburi District-Burma border – and has thus facilitated migration.
3.3 Research Methods
To obtain my empirical data, I conducted twenty-seven semi-structured interviews that would contribute to my in-depth understanding on stretching the Thai-Burma border around Mon State. I met roughly half of the people I interviewed on prior trips to the Thai-Burma border, and met the rest through a snowball effect. Nine of the interviews were conducted in Sangkhlaburi; the remaining eighteen in Mon State. The majority of people I interviewed worked for Mon-based community organizations. I interviewed twenty people who were working for, or doing internships at, community-based organizations at the time I spoke them; all of these twenty people heard about the community organizations in wanting to contribute to political situation in their home country, or gain vocational skills; four people who first went to Thailand as migrant workers, of whom two went individually and two with their families; two people who
came to Thailand to escape a civil war in their hometowns15 of which one later became a
14 Other (former) insurgency groups, such as the Karen National Union hold similar positions along the
Thai-Burma border, also controlling political enclaves in the area (Irrawaddy 13 June 2013).
monk; one became a political dissident when being in Thailand, for having ties to the New Mon State Party; one was an undocumented migrant worker in Malaysia before he started to volunteer for a Mon-based organization. The current and initial motives for
crossing Burma’s border are listed in Figure 116.
IDP17 Migrant Worker Monk NMSP18 employee Org. employee 19 Political dissident Return migrant Study program Thailand Initial reason. 2 5 1 5 14 Reason when interviewed. 1 1 1 22 1 1
Figure 1: Initial reasons, and reasons at time of interview of interviewees to cross
Burma’s border.
Ten interviewees who had jobs serving the Mon community were from Ye Township; twelve were from various other locations in Mon State, elsewhere in southern Burma and adjacent parts of Thailand. I believe that the reason for this relatively large number of respondents being from Ye Township, is because the district is close to the Thai-Burma border and used to be relatively politically instable. Ye Township, the area in which the Party has the most power, is also home to the New Mon State Party headquarters, where it is able to address being Mon more easily, which in turn is utilized when stretching the border.
My interviewees were not representative of Mon border-crossers in that a disproportionate number of people had legal papers ranging from passports to regional IDs, at least allowing them to stay in designated Thai areas close to the Thai-Burma
border20.
are Displaced Burmese Persons, if they are registered as such. Displaced Burmese Persons thus have the identity cards to prove and verify their status.
16 A significant number of interviewees have had other motives for crossing the border after they
initially did so, and before I interviewed them.
17 Internally displaced person. 18 New Mon State Party. 19 Organizational employee.
20 One person had a type of identification, specifying he is a monk that allowed him to go everywhere
in Thailand, but no further. Five people who came as illegal entrants got Thai ID, allowing them to travel everywhere in the country also. Six people had different kinds of regional ID cards, which they
Many of my respondents were crossing the border in ways that where often illegal, or on the fringes of illegality, and engaged in activities that were only allowed as regional authorities turned a blind eye and my actions were no different. Therefore, I chose to keep my respondents anonymous to protect myself if I were to go to Thailand and Burma in the future, but more importantly to protect the people without whom I could not have collected my data. To differentiate between interviewees, I listed the date on which the conversation with the particular respondent occurred and substituted names for numbers.
Additionally, I had informal conversations related to the subjects of my research with many other people; the vast majority of people I had informal talks with, I had not met before doing research. Most had left Burma while others had not, but even those who did not, had family members and friends who had left the country.
Observations gave me insight into what social networks individuals were part of, and whether or not these networks stretched into Thailand. Posters of the New Mon State Party I saw when attending ceremonies at monasteries for example, indicated that its abbots had strong ties to the Party and that they had access to, or were part of a cross-border network.
Life histories were valuable, as people told me how the role of the border has changed over the past decades. Not long ago, thick jungles set the scene along the southern part of the Thai-Burma border and political borders were not as strictly enforced as they are now. Now much jungle has been replaced by rubber plantations, resulting both in a different type of insurgency warfare – rural to urbanized – and less remote borders.
3.4 Language
In Sangkhlaburi people speak a variety of languages, including Mon, Thai, Burmese, Karen, and English in many of the community organizations. Most people, disregarding their national background speak Thai or Burmese, or both. My basic Thai and minimal Burmese allowed me to get by on a daily basis. In Mon State nearly everyone spoke Burmese fluently, while the Mon language was most often relied on. Burmese is spoken
at government institutions, such as schools, etc. during civil society-related workshops21,
had to renew every ten years. This regional ID dictated that its owners would stay in a designated area, either Mae Sot or Sangkhlaburi. When wanting to leave town, permission has to be granted by district authorities. Thirteen had passports, which were mainly used by people working for Mon-based organizations when going abroad further than Thailand. Passports were needed to obtain education, working towards strengthening Burma’s civil society, or when traveling as Mon representatives during political events abroad. Only six of the people I interviewed had no legal documentation whatsoever, when living abroad.
and usually at markets. During social activities, in Mon organizations and at home, Mon was often the sole language used. Although I increasingly understood Mon, speaking the language remained impossible for me. The vast majority of my interviews were therefore conducted in English, while someone translated interviews with people who did not speak English. During all the events I went to, there was someone who could translate into English for me. However, if I had been able to speak Mon, my research would have been easier, allowing me to understand small talk between people I now could not.
3.5 Obstacles and Challenges
Challenges came plentiful during research in Burma and Thailand and as time passed, the obstacles became increasingly intense. Difficulties started during my first week in Sangkhlaburi where I taught English at the New Mon State Party office, when the bridge linking the ‘Thai side’ and the ‘Mon side’ of town broke due to logs from up stream having knocked down its foundation. The broken bridge limited my access to the Mon side and its potential respondents, as I lived on the Thai side.
Lack of infrastructure in Sangkhlaburi did not compare with what was yet to come in Mawlamyine where I hoped to conduct the rest of my fieldwork. I knew before going to the city, that Burma’s political improvements that Western media boasted about were only remotely accurate, yet I expected more freedom and better infrastructure than I encountered. With virtually no good Internet connection in town – uploading any webpage took up to several minutes – emailing proved difficult. The first few months Internet and cell phone networks were bad, but as time progressed, both got worse. A rapidly increasing number of network users, possibly flooded the shaky services
rendering them useless22. While initially I could speak to people outside Burma, towards
the end of my research this was impossible.
An organization I had previously worked for asked me to live with them, to both do me a favor and so I could teach basic English and help checking their English documents and applications. On one hand, this gave me a lot of insight, while on the other this
insight was restricted to what happened at home23. Not being able to leave the house,
made gathering data difficult, since opportunities to meet people and interview them were extremely scarce.
I came to Mawlamyine in August 2013, and only in October could foreigners officially live outside of hotels and guesthouses. I thus stayed with the organization
22 There is also the fact that the still-oppressive government is not too generous with services that could
lead to greater individual freedom.
illegally, and to protect them and myself, leaving the house happened no more than twice a week – often only to the street behind our house. I was not allowed to leave the office without someone from the office to chaperone me at all times. I could neither leave, nor come back to the house after sundown.
I did however, manage to attend a Training of Trainers workshop hosted by a Mon-based political institution to raise awareness of the abundantly laid out land mines along the Burmese side of the Thai-Burma border. Although the political institution initially permitted me to attend the three-day-workshop, my workshop days came to and end when
Special Police24 (SP) noticed me. On the first day, SP took pictures and later asked a
high-ranking member of the political organization what I did there as a foreigner who was not registered as a workshop trainer. The members said I came, because I would soon get married to a soldier of a former insurgency group who also attended the training. However, when the foreign trainers went back to their hotels, the SP followed them and checked with the hotel if they, and I, were registered there. They could not find any information about me, after which regional government officials looked for me at hotels, not being able to find anyone to match my description at the places they looked, which led to the intelligence agency looking for me more intensely.
When the government’s scrutiny wore off I left the house several times, realizing that conducting fieldwork under these circumstances was nearly impossible. My contingency plan prompted a trip to Sangkhlaburi to make up for the low number of interviews I managed to conduct in Mawlamyine. It was then that I decided I would be better off living elsewhere than at the Mon organization. Living elsewhere posed a new problem. When the government had confirmed that foreigners were allowed to rent houses in urban areas starting October, when I came back that month I managed to rent a house. While everything was done officially, within hours of me signing the contract, SP began harassing my landlord and after a week I had to move out again. Two weeks into living in a hostel – and on the verge of leaving Burma since fieldwork seemed impossible – my friend signed a contract for me to rent a house under her name. While the district authorities allowed me to unofficially live in the house, the central government was bypassed. Thus although I could move freely in the city district I resided in, and even
24 Special Police, or SP refers to Burma’s intelligence agency. I was told that SP showed up, to make
sure nothing irregular happens and to do this, they have two main tasks. One is to check what foreigners are doing, and what their motives are for doing this. The other task is checking what happens at political institutions, and make sure that what they say does not cast the (central) government in a negative light. Currently, people are still being incarcerated for their political
leave the house on daily basis, going to other districts could only be done once or twice weekly.
My unprecedented freedom only lasted one day, when while cleaning I slipped and broke both bones in my forearm. After seeking medical help in Mawlamyine it was suggested that if I wanted to minimize permanent damage and pain, I needed surgery that
could neither be performed in the city, nor in the country25. A six-week-trip to Bangkok,
six screws and a metal plate later, I made it back to Mawlamyine. Upon returning, the last two months in Burma I enjoyed healthily, with relative freedom.
3.6 Research Bias
I came in contact with the New Mon State Party in 2010, when I started teaching in their Sangkhlaburi office. Since then, members of the organization, and their families, have catered to my every need, feeding me, keeping me company, keeping me safe, arranging visas and tickets where I failed to do so, etc. While I very much appreciate what they have done for me, it is exactly as a result of this that I do acknowledge that the Party and its policy may have colored my research. During the little time I could leave the house, the only people I met, were people who were part of the New Mon State Party network. Additionally, consequent to my personal ties with the Party, at times I felt that people may not have been completely honest to me regarding their views of the former insurgency.
25 Although I could have gone for medical care in Yangon, everyone advised me against it, since
4. Government and Goods
This chapter zooms in on the how the Burmese government has influenced the cross-border practices of Mon people, and how goods make it across the cross-border via Mon spaces. It thus describes how the Thai-Burma border is stretched, by factors other than by the Mon who do so by residing outside Burma.
4.1 The Burmese Side
Degrees to which borders can be stretched operate on the premises that Mon can reach the border from various locations in Burma. It may then appear strange that nationals of a country are restricted in their traveling by the ruling government. However until recently, there were military checkpoints throughout Burma to do exactly that. During this time, people’s ability to stretch Burma’s borders was limited due to the restrictions the military government imposed on movements of people. In the part of Burma where the government swayed the scepter, restrictions were imposed. Whereas in the areas controlled by the New Mon State Party, which are the heart of the Mon region, rather than the periphery of Burma, goods from Thailand made it daily – and with ease – to be transported further into Burma. On the other side of the Mon regions, vast numbers of Mon people still made it to Thailand and elsewhere in the region. Now the Burmese government treats traveling people within the country imposing a newfound political freedom, stretching the border beyond New Mon State Party Controlled areas on the Burmese side has eased.
Until mid 2012, everyone who wished to travel from one area in Burma, to the next had to deal with the numerous military checkpoints on the way to their destination. This has now changed as the following quote suggests;
“We can easily go from Rangoon to Mawlamyine. Before we could not go, [the Burmese military] checked so many things; the bus, and people on it would be checked where they are from, where you were going, why go so far, what you would do there, they asked so many questions... So now it’s easy to go anywhere in Burma.”26
